Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous Stoned Ho (not really)

EDIT: The made-for-TV movie based off this book is on YouTube! YES!

I picked this gem off the library discard shelf in 7th grade, not knowing anything about it. It's a hardcover version with no dustjacket, just the title written on the spine, no blurbs about it or anything. Man, am I glad I did. I'm sure many of you have read it, and almost all of you at least know what it is, but for the few escaped Duggar children that read this or something that have no clue, I'll explain. Go Ask Alice is the "diary" of an "anonymous teenager" in the 70's that basically serves as an anti-drug PSA. DO DRUGS AND YOU'LL DIE! This book is the shit!

Not Yet Stoned Ho buys her diary and goes all angsty about some dude named Roger. She turns 15 shortly after, cries about putting on seven pounds, and then finds out she's moving. Then she gets happy, loses ten pounds, and gets asked out on dates. What. The next couple entries are devoted to her going on dumb dates and I don't care because nothing in the book is cool until she starts shooting up anyway.

So Not Yet Stoned Ho moves finally and finds it hard to adjust to her new school. She puts on fifteen pounds because I guess she's a stress eater. Finally she meets a Jewish girl down the street named Beth and they become BFF. After awhile Beth's parents tell her she's going to go to a Jewish summer camp for six weeks (I had a Hitler joke in there, but that's so inappropriate). Not Yet Stoned Ho acts like Beth is her fucking heroin or something and she needs her or else she'll die from the DT's and freaks the fuck out. Calm down, bitch. Beth leaves for her concentration camp (inappropriate!), and NYSH sadly goes off to spend some time with her grandparents in her old town.

NYSH is super bored in her old town when one of her old sort-of friends, Jill, invites her to a party. She accepts, and they say they're going to play a party game. Ooh, like pin the tale on the donkey? Nope, instead Jill spiked 10 out of 14 bottles of Coke with LSD without telling anyone and you get to see who trips balls! Thus, Not Yet Stoned Ho turns into Trippy Ho. I have to tell you, it doesn't sound very anti-drug PSA to me, it sounds pretty fucking cool. I'll take my Snapple with a shot of LSD, please! Trippy Ho says she's glad she got one of the spiked Cokes, but doesn't think she'll do it again.

...However, the next day, she goes out on a date with one of the guys from the party and lets him inject speed into her. Because obviously if you unwittingly take LSD once you automatically move onto to shooting up. The fuck? The next day her grandfather has a heart attack, so she spends a few weeks off drugs and helping them out. When she feels he's better, she decides to go to a party and take one last acid trip and guess what, loses her virginity. It all starts with one bottle of Coke, you heard it here first.

Trippy Ho is now worried that she's Pregnant Ho and slowly goes nuts about that, even to the point that when she goes home her mother takes her to the doctor and gets her tranquilizers. Beth escapes the concentration camp but is now ultra Jew and doesn't have much in common with Trippy Might Be Pregnant Ho any more. Period comes, not pregnant, hooray! She goes to a groovy new boutique and meets a new friend named Chris, who shows her how to iron her hair like a hippie. Trippy Not Pregnant Ho's parents sit her down and are all like, wtf, why are you a dirty hippie now? Some angsty entries concerning her parents and "The Establishment" ensue and I roll my eyes. I wish this book could be given the SVH treatment and be updated for this time, because you know she'd be locking herself in her room and carving into her arm while listening to My Chemical Romance or some shit. She finds out her old crush, Roger, is going to military school and is all sads about that and I don't care. Chris gives her some sort of upper and tells her to take it and listen to some groovy music. She takes it and feels wonderful but needs her tranquilizers to come back down. And so the cycle begins.

Some entries about how she needs to take "Bennys" and "Dexies" to survive school and home and tranquilizers to come down, so basically she's drugged out all the fucking time. Then she and Chris hang out with two guys named Ted and Richie and she smokes pot for the first time, and I don't know what the fuck she's smoking, but she has the dumbest experience ever. This is totally not written by a drug user AT ALL. Bitch didn't even have the munchies! I CALL SHENANIGANS!

Now since she's tried pot ONCE, she is of course a drug dealer. OF COURSE. And where does she deal? The local grade school. Yep, she's pushing acid to 9 and 10 year olds. Plus she's fucking Richie all the time and is a full blown multi drug user. Is this moving kind of fast for you? THAT'S HOW DRUGS ARE. You try pot once, the next day you're selling acid to a toddler!

Chris and Selling Acid To Toddlers Ho walk in on Ted and Richie screwing each other so they decide to book it and run away to San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury, anyone? They live in a hole in the wall apartment, but both manage to get glamorous boutique jobs after a bit. This book really isn't discouraging shit. They start going to parties at Chris's boss's place and start doing heroin there and realize that they're getting raped while on heroin. They leave their apartment and move onto the Berkeley area with hopes of starting their own boutique. I thought you needed inventory and shit for a boutique but whatever.

Well instead they rent an apartment and fix it up all groovy like and then charge kids to come in and watch their TV and hang out and shit, I guess. I don't know, it sounds pretty stupid to me, but these dumbass Berkeley hippies totally buy into it and they make a shitload of cash. But instead of living the high life they run away again - this time back to home.

Chris and Formerly Runaway Ho return home and to school. FRH is having a hard time because dudes won't leave her alone because they still think she's a dealer and they want to buy off her. Eventually she gives in and becomes friends with one of the dudes (wha?) and gets back on drugs. This book is confusing. The dude is busted by the cops, and then Chris and Back To Being A Druggie Ho are busted too.

Now Not A Druggie Ho is under extreme lockdown by her parents. No drugs, nothing. She's doing fine, but then someone gives her something at school and then next thing we know she's run away again, this time to Denver. If you do drugs, YOU WILL RUN AWAY FROM HOME EVERY TIME. TRUST. She's super sick with a cold, but is dropping acid like no one's business. Then she starts prostituting herself for drugs and says by far my favorite quote of the book, "Another day, another blow job." I think we all should say that upon arriving to work, school, etc. everyday. Too awesome. Eventually she gets in touch with a priest, who calls her parents, and they come and get her.

This time she stays good for a longer time than the last time. She's having trouble in school again, though, because the druggies don't believe she's clean and the clean kids think she's still a druggie. Then her grandfather has a stroke and dies. Surprisingly, she doesn't turn back to drugs again.

Clean Again Ho meets a dude named Joel and is all obsessed over him. The druggies at school are attacking her for reasons I cannot understand, like putting a joint in her purse, and a burning roach in her locker. Okay, no stoner in their right mind would waste their pot on anyone. That's just dumb. Druggies are greedy little bastards, watch an episode of Intervention. Those bitches will steal, lie, cheat, and whore themselves out for a little bit of drugs. They certainly wouldn't waste any. Lying sack of shit!

School ends, and Clean Again Ho accepts a baby-sitting job. The next entry is from a mental hospital. Clearly, she was sitting for the Pikes. One of the druggies, in an attempt to get her back on drugs, left some LSD laced chocolate-covered peanuts at the house, and she had a really bad trip from them, nearly clawing her face off in the process. Gross! So now she's in an insane asylum, because she thinks worms are eating her face. Ew! Eventually she finds God or some shit and is cured, because religion and saying no to drugs cure insanity, duh. She goes home.

For some reason now the druggies leave her alone. I don't know. She meets new non-druggie friends and is all in love with them and blah blah blah, and is doing well in school and at home. She ends with the decision not to keep another diary. We then get an epilogue saying that three weeks later her parents came home and found her dead, and it is unknown if it was an accidental or premeditated overdose.

Recap: drugs will make you lose your virginity, get raped, become a prostitute, run away (multiple times), sell to grade schoolers, become a target of bullying, and DIE! They will not make you fat.

Yeah, I always hated it, too. It always pissed me off how in the book they acted like pot was the worst drug when in reality I know more people with alcohol than drug problems--it's just way easier to slip under the radar with alcohol in our culture than with pills or anything else.

We learned in my Chemical Dependency class that you're more likely to die from an addiction to alcohol than any other substance, so there you have it.

I read an article prior to reading the book this time that says that the "editor" is a Mormon and a theme in all of her books is that the kids are good God-fearing teens until they accidentally are exposed to the evils of the big bad world, and then they DIE.

Here's a link: http://www.shutitdown.net/text/askalice.html

For the record, when I first read this in 7th grade, I didn't know anything about it being an anti-drug PSA. I saw it as the trash it was. Maybe because I grew up in a different time where, by 1997, I knew if you smoked pot once you didn't become a drug dealer the next day, or maybe it was because I was a sarcastic little shit back then, who knows.

I probably read this around 7th or 8th grade too because it was one of those "controversial" books that kids were passing around. I didn't realize it was a drug PSA either at the time, but I do remember thinking WTF?! Needle drug use comes before pot?! I knew I was supposed to get some sort of message from it, but I walked away uncertain what it was, other than don't write a book unless you know what the hell you're talking about.

The author is supposed to be a mormon doctor, who doesn't have proof of a real PhD. If you loved this, then you have to read her other great work "Jay's Journal" which is full of teen Satanic cult fun!

I love your blog, btw. I think I stumbled upon it by searching "adult obsessed with SVH."

I actually own "Treacherous Love" and "It Happened To Nancy" by the same author, but had no idea about "Jay's Journal" until I read that article linked above. It was instant trash love; my mouth dropped open and I told my cat, "I gotta get that shit!"

LOL @ "adult obsessed with SVH." That I am.

And you can't ask Alice anything any more...because she smoked pot once and DIED!

This book is actually what made my friends want to try acid. So way to go, Beatrice Sparks! I love how she tried to pretend she was just stumbling upon fucked-up kids' diaries all the time. Like, "Oh, here's another one!" I'm still not sure whether to be disgusted by this book or to laugh and laugh and laugh at it.

Oh my god, I'd totally forgotten the "another day, another blow job" line. From now on, whenever I enter a room, I'm leading with that.

I remember reading this book, but I don't really remember what I thought of it as a kid. I never did drugs, but I can't say it was because of this. It was probably because of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, if it was anything. Now that was effed up shit - though I would guess it's awesome to watch while high.

I love that we're supposed to believe that she's keeping a diary the whole time she's living on the street and prostituting herself. AND while she's in the hospital with her fingers in bandages. But most of all, that when she asked her mother to bring her the diary in the hospital, her mother didn't read it first. WTF? She knows there's some dangerous stuff going on and she doesn't bother to read the diary?